Sobriquet
by Helena Lucia
Summary: Namikaze Minato is born ageless, and dies the same, Orochimaru observes. -Drabble about the Yondaime Hokage.-


**_ Sobriquet_**

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**_Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.  
_**

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Namikaze Minato is born ageless, the bastard child of a nameless shinobi and a half-mad mother from the bay on the other side of the Uzu-sea.

If truth be told, Minato never knew his mother's last name, **_Namikaze _**being the title that came to mind when he watched the sealed ruins of Uzushiogakure fade into the distance as he made his way to Konoha. It is the name he carves into history with a tri-pronged knife when he cuts a bloody swath through the Elemental Countries during the Third Great Shinobi War.

They had accepted him into the academy, watching with narrowed eyes as he progressed at an unnerving rate through the ranks. He had been given his second title then. **_Genius_**.

Minato requests that Jiraiya-sensei teach him seals when he gains his apprenticeship, and dodges the questions of why he is interested. The memory of a ruined village across the ocean remains stark in his memory. He never forgot his mother's ravings, of how the Uzumakis' were nearly gods, with their seals and brushes, and bloodied ink. Uzumaki Kushina, with her too-red hair and vivacious chakra is proof of it.

He takes to the art with watchful eyes and quick, graceful fingers, and soon it seems as if everyone else is moving in slow-motion; He smirks at Orochimaru-sempai's widened eyes and thinned lips when he vanishes in a flash of gold.  
_  
"You can't keep cheating time forever, Minato-kun." _He hisses, but there is recognition and something that might have been admiration in his tone. Minato is not yet fourteen.

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Jiraiya-sensei is proud, even though he clearly believes Minato is intoxicated on his own brilliance, and Minato only tells him once, when Sensei is too drunk to remember, that his large, calloused hand on Minato's shoulder is what keeps him grounded when he receives his third moniker. The**_ Yellow Flash_**. He knows well enough, that it is synonymous with _ruthless, inhuman, **demon**_, in Iwa.

And perhaps, he thinks, when he lets his student fall into his tomb of boulders and rockfall, that Iwa are the ones who have it right. Orochimaru-sempai is correct when he implies that Minato is utterly insane behind his facade of humility and pacifism.

They call him _saviour _in Konoha.

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Minato is unsurprised when Kakashi stands beside him at Obito's corpse-less funeral, headband slanted over his gifted, _cursed_, eye, but can't help but be disappointed, disgust rising in his throat as he reminds himself, _father like son_. Kakashi is a failure, and his final surviving student will wallow in his regret to the point of self-destruction. However, he is still Minato's responsibility, just as Rin was until her untimely death.

He is eighteen when he marries Kushina, and loves her as much as he is able, as much as he can allow. Sometimes he believes that she keeps his from his own madness. In the privacy of his own mind, he knows that this is mostly wishful thinking.

A year later his inauguration as Yondaime Hokage takes place, and he smiles easily at the crowd, hair glinting gold under the wide-brimmed ceremonial hat. A memento to his slaughter of the Iwa-nins. They shout his titles, and not his name, calling him a hero of the battlefield.  
It's incorrect of them; what he did on the front lines was not a battle, because that implies that two opposing sides fought and both possessed a chance at victory. It wasn't a battle. It was an _extermination_.

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Minato recalls easily the way the snake Sannin scowled, dark hair shifting as he strode away under the Sandaime's cool gaze. It's just as well, he supposes. Orochimaru-sempai was the only one who knew the young Hokage didn't believe a word of his own acceptance speech.

_"The will of fire."_ He finds it only fleetingly ironic that the village of the _leaves _would choose that particular turn of phrase.

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_"Konohagakure chose a monster for a kage." The Iwa jounin hisses, and Minato can't help but swallow a breath of laughter as the woman's body hits the ground._

_"I gave them what they wanted, didn't I?"_

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When the Kyuubi appears, he is honestly curious. He had anticipated Obito's survival, but seeing him now, he only feels distaste. The Uchiha, for all their physical power and deceiving eyes, are weak, in the sense of how easily they are swayed and manipulated. He takes his former student's right arm and a portion of his chest as payment for his idiocy, but allows the Uchiha his life, and discloses his reasons only to the Kyuubi.

That night he summons a god to the mortal realm and takes it's power, twisting it into the form he wishes as the Kyuubi snarls at him, that immortal creature who has seen the dawn of Konoha and who will see the end, wary of an ageless human.

Namikaze Minato dies that day, corpse preserved and cold from the _Shinigami's_ seal.

Most believe he miscalculated that night on October tenth, but as he awakens, body weak and tender as a child's his ice-blue eyes are sharp and he laughs himself sick as the desert sands brush against his naked calves.

_Sobriquet: an alias, an assumed name. Minato has more than he can count._

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**_Author's Note: Well, there you have it._**


End file.
